Turning Difficulties into Opportunities in Research

Knowing right questions is the first step in knowing the answers



Hamming: “Often the great scientists, by turning the problem around
a bit, changed a defect to an asset. For example, many
scientists when they found they couldn’t do a problem finally
began to study why not. They then turned it around the
other way and said, ‘But of course, this is what it is’ and
got an important result.
Hamming, you think the machines can do practically everything.
Why can’t you make them write programs?” What
appeared at first to me as a defect forced me into automatic
programming very early. What appears to be a fault, often,
by a change of viewpoint, turns out to be one of the greatest
assets you can have. ”

http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~uday/soft-copies/what-is-research.pdf